Management
Un-Synchronicityby Karl Walinskas
Back in the 80s the Police were a rock trio that was riding high in popularity and tripping over buckets of cash with their new album entitle Synchronicity. Then Sting left the band and Whammo! No more Police music. Un-synchronicity. Millions of emotionally distraught fans were left clutching their Sting action figure and listening to old Phil Collins music, but it just wasn’t the same. Well, technology can be just like a dysfunctional band. Too much success and too much stuff, and all you have left are a cyber-short-circuit and tears on your keyboard.
Case in point—yours truly. As a result of a new career challenge as a COO (anything title beginning with a ‘C’ must be important, right?) I decided I needed to be more in touch with technology and more accessible. First, the new Dell Inspiron 8000 notebook computer. A sleek, devil-may-care machine if ever there was one. The computer propeller head in my new flock (I’m not pompous) hooked me up with a cool docking station that connects me to a 19” color monitor, keyboard and mouse waiting on the loaner desk in my new executive offices. The suite of furniture is on order. I swear it. I know PCs. No problem.
Well, gotta be connected and look just too sweet in airports, so I broke my ten-year boycott on cellular phones and picked up an Audiovox DP (digital phone to the bourgeoisie). I know what you’re thinking. Audiovox really sucked it up in the cell phone biz in the early 90s. My wife said the same thing, and she should know because she used to sell them. However, the salesman assured me that AV is now a leader with the onset of digital technology. He sounded convincing, so I laid down the gold.
To separate myself from every other hack in a two-piece at terminal F12 at O’Hare, I also got a megaslick Sony digital voice recorder with 180 minutes of mind-blowing record time. It’s small enough to fit within the perimeter of my palm, like the famous beer can shot of Andre the Giant. Passers-by really turn heads when they see me talking into my hand, knowing I am either the reincarnation of Maxwell Smart, an exec with the latest in technology, or a kook with an imaginary friend called Mr. Metacarpal.
As I hum my own lyrics to “King of Pain”, I’m beginning to feel synchronous, but one key element of the technological wardrobe is incomplete. That’s right, I shelved the pathetic paper Daytimer system for a Handspring Visor, just like a Palm Pilot but wait, there’s even more! Everybody has a Palm, but this thing is expandable to include a mini-digital camera option, voice recorder (but of course, hey hey hey, I don’t need one), and anything else electronic that is the size of a matchbook, so nearly everything. You never know when I need to snap off a few Polaroids of a set of weapons plans, I thought, slipping into my James Bond espionage fantasy again.
So now I’ve got it all and I’ve got it all with me, sitting in the airport during a 2-hour layover and writing this article. Oh sure, there are the usual problems to work around when going through security. Besides answering that really tough terrorist-entrapment question about whether I packed my bags myself, I set off the metal detector 4 times. Heck, the attention is terrific, and no one in line gets ticked off! I’ve got all the toys and if the plane goes down, I am he with the most, thereby winning the game.
Young teachers…the subject…of schoolgirl fantasies…
Well, to be honest with you, it hasn’t all been a bed of roses. The laptop, for instance, has a trackball and a touch pad mouse, and while I’m typing it keeps accidentally clicking on things and jumping to another li—dammit! There it goes again. Then when I put it into the hi-tech office cradle for the first time, the Mike Dell/Bill Gates union decided to disable my MS Publisher for the one time per year I ever use it. I did what any technologically savvy VIP does to fix the problem—ctrl-alt-del simultaneously, all at the same time. My system was locked down faster than a state penitentiary when a rat trips the escape alarm. I called tech support at Dell since I am under warranty. It only took 40 minutes for them to pick up, but it was busy time. After pulling the PC out of the docking station so I could flip it over to get the phone tech the appropriate numbers, thereby proving I actually had one, I was back up in running inside of 4 hours. Another six days and I’ll have learned how to operate the touch-sensitive mouse pad, and now I can check email from any hotel room with a phone line.
The digital phone has only had two difficulties, one expected, one a little surprise. I have noticed that digital phones seem to have similar issues with mountains that the old cellular phones did. A couple of conversations got cut off, and I found myself uttering 30 seconds of expletives deleted at the snob on the other end of the disconnection before I realized that it was my bad. The cool thing about mine is that it has a voice activation feature. I press a button and it goes like this:
“Speaking voicemail,” I say.
Please speak more quickly,” replies robot girl.
"Speaking voicemail.”
“Please speak more quickly.”
“Speaking voicemail.”
“Please speak mo—“
“SPEAKING VOICEMAIL!”
“Connecting, to Karl’s health club.”
“What the?!” I exclaim, taking it in stride, laughing out loud at my plight.
Robot girl needs some re-training. Its cool.
The voice recorder has had no issues, except the alarm going off in the middle of today’s strategic planning session with clients. I ignored it and pretended it wasn’t me, mentally singing the refrain of the popular Shaggy song, “It wasn’t me.” To be fair, this device is pretty simple. Even a senior could figure it out without the assistance of a thirteen-year-old grandson. The manual is only 12 pages long, wallet-size.
Now of course comes the Pal—the Visor unit. It only took me 40 minutes to learn the script letters I needed to navigate the little-pointy-thingy for entering stuff, swear to God it’s true; excepting, of course, the “@” symbol that all Palm-aficionados need to use to enter email addresses in your phone book. That wasn’t in the on-Visor tutorial, but I stumbled into it after about a week straight of messing around in airports.
The real trip has been synchronizing—ahh, there’s that word root again—the Visor to the PC through its own little docking station, a different docking station, a smaller docking station next to the larger docking station on the temporary desk. Being a hotshot exec I have special needs. The address book has to synch with my ACT! Database, requiring special software from a company called Intellisync, the emails have to go to my MS Outlook, and the expenses go to the Palm Desktop software. Trouble in this arena prompted three help calls to the Intellisync tech support line. Three calls because the first two ended in the most obnoxious and downright rude customer experiences I have ever witnessed or even read about, one ending in a hang up from the CSR professional when I asked why she was being short with me. Finally, though, the last fellow politely pulled it all together with expertise gained from years of tech-experience on the job. Uninstall the software and reinstall it. Hey, it worked!
All in all, I know that these little gadgets will ultimately save me time and improve my communications with subordinates, superiors, peers and my public. I am just going through the growing pains associated with the introduction of new technology. Hell, these trinkets might not even become outdated within the next two years. Wait a minute, what am I saying? Here’s a tiny pearl of wisdom that you can learn from me. Write this down using your electronic pen now. When you are going to go electronic in your personal communication strategy, do it one device, and one step, at a time before moving on to the next piece of Star-Trek hardware. Paper and pencil still work, and you’ll avoid the nasty looks at the airport from everybody except the Harry Krishna’s. Signing off.
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Karl Walinskas is a communications expert, COO of the business portal mfgGate.com, author of GETTING CONNECTED THROUGH EXCEPTIONAL LEADERSHIP and a catalyst who helps organizations communicate better through his company, The Speaking Connection (www.Speak
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